2:58 am… that is the time I sit up and look at my clock. I need to be awake by 3:30am, and I wake up early. I decide to de-activate the alarm and get up anyway. After all, if I go back to sleep and am then woken up by the alarm, I then enter that strange realm where I’m not quite asleep but not quite awake, where I’m so groggy that my brain isn’t even recording its own thoughts. Its that realm where you suddenly realize you’re at work, and have no clear idea of how you got there.
So I get ready and drive into work, the highways clear of their usual congestion, driving so early that its even before the morning show on the radio. I arrive at my work, the dark building looming before me. All the windows are dark, and the lobby is empty, save for the distant music that fills all lobbies. I’m not sure why, that music, when you can hear it, is more creepy than the silence would be. And when I take the elevator to the eleventh floor (which is nearly pitch black), the spookiness is only heightened.
Now, I’m not scared, on the contrary, I thrive on such environments. Some of my fondest memories have been of such places, namely the back hallways of the mall where I used to work, cold grey stone that extended as far as you could see, very faintly in the distance you could hear the clamoring people outside. Our storage area was in an abandoned department store that has been barricaded over in the center of the mall, dark and dilapidated. I take these environments, the essense, the sense of foreboding, and I envision stories, tales of heroes making their way through some sinister lair, evil skulking just out of sight.
In my honest opinion, the true art of storytelling is taking that which is familiar, that which is ordinary, and telling it in an extraordinary fashion. The greatest example of this is Stephen King. No matter how bizarre and fantastic the story got, you could read those lines and say to yourself, “I know that place, I’ve been there. I can smell it, hear it, practically taste it.”
I’d like to think he’s done the same thing. He walks down the same road every one else does, but he SEES the story that everyone else misses. And when he tells that story, everyone who’s ever been on that road listens, and knows.
Well… that was a bit of a tangent.
Anyway, I’m tired, and I still have six hours of work left, so I’m going to go now.
Zel-kun out.
David N. Scott | 24-Oct-06 at 11:44 am | Permalink
3:30 AM, huh? Agree with you on the creepiness and the King. He does manage to make it rpetty real. I hate that foggy place–it’s especially frustrating to me, because I depend on myself. No card punchers here.